


Mind's Eye

by AlbatrossGJ



Category: Dark City (1998)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 21:29:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17988851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlbatrossGJ/pseuds/AlbatrossGJ
Summary: "Doctor, it is time," came the bellowing voice.  The Strangers had lost patience.John was already in the vat.  He had to be used or the Strangers would suspect something.  Yet if John were mixed...no.. tainted by others, he would cease to exist.  The doctor's one tie to reality would be gone.  He had to think.  If John had to be combined, could there not be a way to make his personality ascendant?  To ensure he survived even if inside a Frankenstein's monster of a construct?He blinked.  Who was Frankenstein?





	Mind's Eye

The doctor looked through clear glass at his work with something akin to paternal pride. Iridescent spots chased each other with an uncanny lifelike vivaciousness before his eyes. Trapped in curved plasticine, the fragments of a hundred lives coalesced into a new gestalt. The scarred young man did not know the thoughts' original owners, but he could _see_ them, pieces of a puzzles long ago torn apart, impossible to rebuild.

If he had not loved his work so much, he surely would have gone mad. A name, fictional or real, passed through his head every time he thought too much about what he was doing. Quisling. The name echoed naggingly when he swam in the pool, a moment's respite while his masters gagged at the stench of moisture.

In a way, the doctor suffered the worst. Everyone around him, from the policemen to the pickpockets, the milkmen to the musicians, they had no idea the parts they played in the grand experiment. They lived their lives, the dark halves anyway, going about their carefully maintained existence. And, every night, some of them became someone else.

With the doctor's help.

He was a memory peddler. Originally, some time ago, he'd been a psychiatrist. He must have been a very good one because the glint of a dozen plaques still glittered prettily in what was left of his mind. The wall they lay on and the building that wall supported, the town the building stood in, even the planet were all forgotten details. But the plaques remained. "Mnemosynian Fellowship" "Provost, Basel school of Psychiatry" "Paul Schreber, Nobel Prize" 

The doctor also knew that he shared a common origin with the thousands of fellow humans trapped inside the spiral city. That, he could deduce by inference if nothing else. He'd stolen their memories as they slept, as the pale aliens laughed in a riot of clicks and hisses. And then, at their command, he'd robbed himself as well. There was not much left of Paul Schreber now, save for that which was his very essence. 

It was a lonely existence. The doctor liked people. He remembered that. It was why he studied the human mind. The Strangers had provided the next step required for his research. They'd turned memories into building blocks, allowing him to study their importance, their cause and effect on the human psyche. Something nagged in the back of the doctor's mind, however. This was a blind alley, he knew. Yet, like any scientist given infinite resources, he reveled in the experimental hardware, especially when the subject was the very stuff dreams are made of.

This time, the Strangers had demanded something supremely contradictory, a persona so at odds with itself as to render the soul of its human host bare to examination. Once the memory matrix was completed, a human subject would be injected, all former recollections, borrowed or native, to be expunged. Then the doctor and his captors would watch with eager anticipation. 

Tonight, the doctor stood over his tools with a determined set in his jaw. This one was a difficult case. Instead of effortlessly flowing into place, the personality elements refused to combine into a coherent whole. A quicksilver flash of a postman's staid existence repulsed the gray particles of a rapist's id. Try as the doctor might, he could not make them miscible. The doctor emptied the vat, mildly chiding as irreplaceable memories went down the drain, never to be remembered again.

He sighed and mopped his sweaty forehead. The doctor straightened his askew glasses and smiled a slight smile. Perhaps there was something telling in this. He did not write down the details of this failed experiment. There was no need as the doctor had, ironically, perfect recall. He had double reason--he wanted none of the Strangers coming to conclusions before him.

Resignedly, the doctor refilled the vat with new solution. He then pulled two flasks almost at random from the thickly settled shelf. The mechanical syringe squeezed drops of indigo from one and chartreuse form the other. They fell into the solution chamber and danced around each other. A childhood disaster.. good.. those made for tumultuous personalities. Too young love.. also interesting. The globules stabilized and hovered at one end of the tank.

A third flask's contents were emptied into the vat... and the doctor's hands tightened their grip on the machinery imperceptibly. Through his expertise and his empathy, the doctor could virtually see each memory, reading them like plain pages. Never did he find anything familiar, though he held the vain hope that he might some day catch snatches of his own mind, if he could recognize it as such. This time, he found nothing he could identify as his own, and yet, in this one, he was startled to find reflections of his own face.

He hunched over the solution vat and attempted to look nonchalant. The Strangers were alien. They could not read expression. They did have little patience, however. The doctor expected he had some time, however. Keenly, he looked into the little blue memories.

It was definitely his face. Smooth and unscarred and with a ridiculous hat on top, but his. He looked at himself eagerly. This memory was charged with emotion. A longing.. no, a desire. Its owner's hand reached out and gently brushed fingers against Paul's cheek. The doctor flushed slightly. Embittered by his treasonous role, he had forgotten, could not imagine thatanyone could or ever did feel about him that way. The memory flitted away, and another filled the stereoscope. A reflection, a real one this time. Perhaps a mirror? A quick glimpse of curly hair and a dazzling blue eye. The memory's owner was male. That surprised the doctor, but only a little. 

The phantom in the vat was rushing to an appointment. No, an assignation. There Paul was again, dapper in a suit the doctor did not recall ever owning. There was a bright smile on Paul's face as the faceless man kissed him. The passion of the embrace moved the doctor, although there was a furtiveness in it. The unknown lover was embarrassed to be seen in public with Paul. The couple stole away down the street and then...

Greedily, the doctor pored through the other memories. They were like a dusty attic, filled with odds and ends with no meaning to anyone but their owner. The scarred man felt hundreds of impatient eyes boring the back of his head, but he had to find more. He gasped as the torrid recollections of a particular night swam before his eyes. Paul's face contorted in pleasure as his lover kissed a trail downwards, filling his mouth with him. Paul's fingers snaked through the man's curly hair, and the doctor could almost feel the electric pleasure of it in this unknown person, this love he'd never known. The doctor bit his lip, entranced. He saw himself explode into his partner.. his John, he suddenly knew. For a moment, the dream was more real than the cold, dead reality of the Strangers' memory chamber.

"Doctor, it is time," came the bellowing voice. The Strangers had lost patience.

John was already in the vat. He had to be used or the Strangers would suspect something. Yet if John were mixed...no.. tainted by others, he would cease to exist. The doctor's one tie to reality would be gone. He had to think. If John had to be combined, could there not be a way to make his personality ascendant? To ensure he survived even if inside a Frankenstein's monster of a construct?

He blinked. Who was Frankenstein?

"Doctor?"

"Of course...but the last was a failure. I must carefully select this time." His voice was a labored rasp.

He could not have remembered a literary or movie reference. He had been careful to delete them all. Yet fresh in his mind was the image of a gentle giant turned monster, befriending and then killing a little girl. In a flash, it was clear. From a tiny germ of memory, a complete image had been born. God, could it be true? The doctor's mind raced. Perhaps all of our memories could be reconstructed from even the tiniest fragments. Perhaps John needn't be lost forever...

The doctor worked quickly, separating infinitesimal pieces from the globs of memory stuff and secreting them with the skill of a master prestidigitator. These, he would rebuild somehow, away from prying eyes. These, he would turn back into his John. 

"Doctor!"

"Of course, of course. The show must go on.. as someone once said." He smiled. John was safe, now. What was left in the vat, he could do with as he pleased. With a strange sense of calm, he went to work, mixing a myriad of personalities into one. 

"Let's see, a touch of unhappy childhood, a dash of teenage rebellion, and last but not least, a tragic death in the family. "

Finis

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Help Haiti in 2010.


End file.
